This invention relates to an upgrade speed control system for a railway marshalling yard.
Conventional railway marshalling yards have a single hump with a downgrade at the end of the yard. The hump height of a conventional marshalling yard is selected according to the running characteristics of poorer running cars under difficult conditions. In other words, the hump height must be high enough to ensure that the poorer running cars can run to the end of the yard and couple safely with the standing cars. In routine operations however, most of running cars or cuts have medium running characteristics, the poorer and better running cars forming but a small proportion. Consequently, the hump height designed for poorer running cars has caused the following problems. For instance, the hump height is increased for only a few poorer running cars, but the potential energy of the whole train is also increased, so the speeds of most medium and better running cars are very high at the time of entering sorting sidings, which leads to the use of additional speed control devices to reduce the cars' speed by offsetting the excess energy obtained from the hump. Moreover, in the case of braking, additional energy would also be consumed by additional speed means.
With the increase of the hump height, there should also be an increase in the elevation level of reception yard. This results in a considerable increase in the earthwork of reception yard, a much larger investment and a longer construction period as well.
An object of the present invention is to overcome the above-discussed shortcomings of the profile of the conventional railway marshalling yard.